


where your heart is set in stone

by cheschi



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Peter Pan & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen, IM COMING BACK TO FIX THIS I PROMISE, lots of squinting is necessary, tbh, yay hook and wendy friendship huzzah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 15:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5876893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheschi/pseuds/cheschi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wendy struggles to define home in the aftermath of Neverland and the least likely person helps her find it. [Mid-3A]</p>
            </blockquote>





	where your heart is set in stone

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd and also, i finished this at 12:30 in the morning

give me a sign,  
am I following blind?  
is there any one listening?  
is there anyone listening?  
i don't know

see i've seen devils i've seen saints  
i've seen the lines between them fade  
i've seen pictures with no meaning  
i don't know what to believe  
—gabrielle aplin {ready to question}

Wendy doesn't expect come into contact with anything reminiscent of Neverland so soon, which is why when the door bell at Granny's chimes and he walks in, tall and brooding and drenched in the memory of Neverland, she burns her tongue and almost drops the cup she's holding. She doesn't notice, much to Ruby's disdain, when the tea begins to wet the table, pooling around in circles.

It's not like she should be particularly surprised. It's not like she would never run into someone from there in a town of about than a thousand people.

Still, though, it's too soon for this. She glares at the traitorous cup of chamomile.

She tenses when she sees him across the room, more out of instinct than anything else. Her mouth goes dry and why is he here. She is not afraid. She has never been afraid of him or those under him back in Neverland and there's no reason for that to change. But she still questions his presence because he should be in the sheriff's station with Emma.

There's s faint buzzing in her ears and it is definitely not coming from her five tea refills and three cups of coffee.

As if an unspoken force is calling him, he cocks his head when he spots her and she thinks please not here please not here please not here. But of course, since the she and universe have a complicated history which mostly involves it not listening to her on several different occasions, he stands in front of her booth in a few quick strides.

"Captain," she nods, a brusque acknowledgement.

"It's Killian."

He slides in the booth. She grips her cup tighter as the leather underneath him squeaks.

She barely knows Captain Hook aside from his time spent on the island when Peter would steer his ship inland for fun and even then they didn't have too much contact. She remembers the smell of alcohol clinging to him and his perennially empty flask that one time she was aboard the Jolly Roger.

Peter didn't like her or the boys interacting with the pirates, pirates whom the Lost Boys would rip to shreds once afternoon bled into night. (Her hands stopped shaking after the first three days of washing the boys' clothes clean of the battle. It doesn't escape her that they come back unmarked each time, regardless of the blood trailing behind them.) Possibly the only thing they have in common is their being victims of the island, but victims is too soft a word because victims are weak and the vicious island taught her to be strong.

She raises an eyebrow at him while simultaneously pulling napkins out of the dispenser to wipe up the mess her drink has made. "What are you doing here?"

Her question is simple, straightforward.

"Same thing as you. Ruby makes a damn good cocoa. Also, you tend to learn how to look through a crowd and be able to spot someone who has just left Neverland."

He points at her face and lazily circles his finger, the other arm propped up behind his head. "You have same dazed expression I had when I first left the island, lassie. Granted, I was much angrier, but it's still the same look."

Her face inexplicably flushes and she wants to snap at him because he of all people has no right—but he speaks again before she can say anything, this time softer. Says it like a quiet, fragile thing. "It's going to be hard. But you're a survivor. That's what we do, we go through hell and we don't die and then we come back. Maybe a little more broken, but we come back."

He's looking at her solemnly, like he wants to listen, his expression so different from the unsure glances that she's been on the receiving end of since she's been here. It's pretty much the only look gotten from the rest of the adults who helped bring her back. Aside from Baelfire, the other adults, she's noticed, walk on eggshells around her, either because they think that the slightest mention of Pan will break the fragile girl they think found on the island or simply because they do not care enough to mind her.

"I don't sleep much anymore," she admits, allowing her body to feel the fatigue her minds longs to share with it, and it feels like confessing a secret. She rolls her shoulders back and hears a satisfying pop.

"So I can tell," he says without missing a beat. He gestures to her cup of tea, then the warm coffee rings on the table and the stack of recently emptied packs of creamer. "Coffee and tea?"

"John and Michael think I do, but I don't have the heart to tell them otherwise. They're trying so hard." Her eyes get weary and betray whatever's really hiding behind her youthful demeanor. She suddenly looks a century older (which, granted, she is) and he sees years of battle in her eyes. A girl who lost her brothers and waited and waited and fought. A girl who survived a hundred years on Neverland, the longest captive, the only girl. More than her lost look, it's this one that he recognizes. He sees the same one in the mirror. "I think it's the nightmares mostly that are keeping me up."

"Ah."

"I can still see Neverland so clearly in my head; it's ridiculous and everyone who would hear this would call me a raving lunatic," she bites her lip, "but I think I actually miss it. I shouldn't, I know. But I don't know what home is anymore."

Home was England. Home was the Darling house, the embrace of her parents and her brothers' chattering and Nana's barking lulling her to sleep. But a hundred years away has turned the carriages of her youth into buses, turned the old Darling house into a skyscraper in the heart of the city, turned her London into something unfamiliar.

Storybrooke feels surreal too. She grew up reading stories of these characters by the faint glow of candlelight as she pretended to be asleep and now she's living alongside them. ("Tell me about it," Emma says one day, chuckling and it calls to mind Henry telling her that she comes from a story too.) The town doesn't feel like it's meant for her either, the pit pat of the soft rain not quite falling right on skin that has braved storms.

There's a thirst in her for bigger things and wilder places. Places with sunlight that paint her gold, where she can drown herself in the sounds of a waterfall or the expanse of mountains.

Killian darkens a little when he hears this.

"Don't do that to yourself." he says, tone shifting and back straightening. "The road that that path leads to is not a pretty one."

"Take it from someone who has been lost for a very, very long time. Home is where this,"—he taps the left side of his vest with his good hand—"And whoever else you have inside it is."

His gaze falls on something behind her head, and she turns to see Emma walking along the street, dropping Henry off at Dr. Hopper's. On the opposite end of the street, she also catches sight of Tinkerbell walking towards the bakery. She's not quite sure what sure what she's supposed to be looking for anymore.

"They say that you can tell what a man is by what he loves. That, lassie, must make him nothing."

Wendy's eyes are tired but corners of her lips tilt upward. "Does that make you a fairy or a savior then?"

"It once made me courageous a long time ago," he says softly, eyes falling to his hook. He refocuses his attention on fixes her with a wry look and tilts his head like he's examining her.

"There's a book about us, you know," she blurts out.

Killian looks bewildered, "What?"

"A book," Wendy says. "And a movie, too. About us. About Neverland. Henry showed it to me once."

"And what does it say?"

"Well, for starters, your hair was longer than mine."

"I'll have you know that some people find this quite attractive."

"I'm sure they do." Then, after a pause: "thank you."

.

(In the morning, Killian sees her about to enter the library under the bell tower, and smiles to himself.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> heavily inspired by my overplaying of gabrielle aplin, thus the title. the ending of this is crappy tbh so i'll be back to fix it this week but i was itching to post something so pardon the errors for now
> 
> (edit 6/11/16: this has yet to be fixed but i'll do it after i post the hunger games darling pan au i'm finishing up)


End file.
